Dialogue 6 – Artificial Intelligence

 

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Prior to the Enlightenment it was considered self-evident that there existed a transcendent creator — God. The study of His Word in The Holy Bible was aimed at revealing His glory. The rise of secularism and the concomitant fall of religion resulted in a belief that humans were not the result of Divine Will but rather physical processes. The philosophy of Nietzsche and Darwin’s theory of natural selection did much to undermine a faith in God and rationalize the system of laws. In this dialogue, two vampires of the Seculari, Noah and Lewis, discuss secularism in relation to recent developments in Artificial Intelligence. Their dialogue centres on whether the metaphor of artificial intelligence in law, policy and regulatory discussions stems from a secular intellectual hubris — that Man can use science to manipulate nature, defy God, cheat death and achieve immortality. Or whether artificial intelligence is the catalyst for the next step in human evolution — Transhumanism.

 

Noah: How are you, Lewis?

Lewis: Well. Did you hear that business about Anthony?

Noah: I was on his review committee. He had to go. He presented a danger to all of us.

Lewis: No doubt. Still, it’s a shame. He had such promise.

Noah: True. Talent is latent potential, maybe that’s why the word talent and latent are anagrams. No matter, vampires, like people, waste talent all the time.

Lewis: Every vampire struggles with eternity.

Noah: Yes, humans have an existential problem diametrically opposed to our own; they struggle with their own mortality.

Lewis: Indeed, becoming like us is a fate worse than death. No longer able to reflect the image of God, they will be just like us, not be able to see their own reflection in the mirror.

Noah: Quite so. We are as Nietzsche might put it, beyond good and evil. However, our lives have no meaning beyond the insatiable thirst for blood.

Lewis: Wretched thirst. If only they knew what life without death was really like, they wouldn’t seek to obtain it.

Noah: Yes. They were told to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness by the one who shed his own blood for them. They were promised that all things would be added, including eternity. Why didn’t they listen?

Lewis: Why didn’t we? Man has a need to control his destiny; he would rather become like God rather than obey and seek to imitate Him.

Noah: It’s an old story. As old as the Tower of Babel.

Lewis: A city with a tower that reaches the heavens.

Noah: Right. Once built, nothing would be impossible for Man. But Man is not God, but rather made in the image of God.

Lewis: When its hubris reaches the heavens, high tech towers are bound to topple under the weight of their own conceit. The operation of technology enlarges output given the same input; this is what most people refer to as efficiency. However, technology also creates its own obsolescence and the creative destruction militates societal trends that are increasingly precipitous. Consider the developments around artificial intelligence.

Noah: Whatever do you mean? I think the humans are making great progress.

Lewis: All progress has an endpoint. Here the goal would appear to be the realization of an immortal mind.

Noah: What’s wrong with that?

Lewis: It is an unending quest, however all efforts to become immortal are idolatrous.

Noah: How so?

Lewis: It’s rebellion against God, like worshiping a statue or any created thing.

Noah: Nonsense!

Lewis: Metaphors convey deeper truth both in science and in literature, they are used all the time. Consider the Big Bang or a heart of stone. The fact that idioms are not literal is unimportant, it’s the underlying meaning that is to be examined. Artificial intelligence is a metaphor that suggests human intelligence can be modelled in a generalized sense.

Noah: And you’re saying it can’t?

Lewis: There are tremendous benefits to AI when the problem is well-defined and limited to the performance of a single task such as medical diagnosis, driving a car or the recognition of patterns in large data sets. The problem comes when we worship the technology we have made. Technology is the new religion these days. It tantalizingly holds the prospect of transcendence of the suffering to which all flesh is heir. We overestimate our abilities and are quick to deify our own creation and humbly bow before it in a collective act of genuflection. We say that the algorithm is a ‘black-box,’ that provides the answer. Artificial intelligence that claims to rival human intelligence is as garish as porn is to sex. It’s a caricature, not the real thing. Why does man want that which God created to be man-made? To render that which is infinite, finite? Is it not because man is perennially dissatisfied with his finitude? Human attempts to collapse heaven and earth invariably will create hell on earth.

Noah: So you have a problem with man improving or upgrading himself? Should they just have remained in their caves?

Lewis: No, but there is a fundamental difference between seeking to reveal God’s glory and claiming it as your own.

Noah: I’m not sure what you mean. Every field of human knowledge is evolving. Does it not follow that humans evolve too? I’m all for it.

Lewis: It is hard to underestimate the profound impact that Darwin has had on the system of research, education and patterns of thought. Universities treat natural selection and the theory of evolution as if they were immutable laws. But any worldview that undermines faith will invariably reduce the individual to that which can be socially constructed.

Noah: But surely the evidence for Darwin’s theory is both over-whelming and uncontroversial at this point. What’s wrong with individuals optimizing their lives and engaging in continuous self-improvement?

Lewis: What you call self-improvement, is more often than not self-deception. We, being evil, crave blood, because it is life and life is good. In the modern age self-righteousness and individualism has replaced seeking to have a right relationship with God.

Noah: Righteousness.

Lewis: Yes. Because the self is now worshiped and not God. Personal feelings are all that matter. Everyone is on their own life journey. Avoiding hurting another’s feelings becomes the goal. Identity politics becomes a form of self-aggrandizement as individuals and their preferred groups seek to replace objective truth with their ‘lived experience.’ Speech is no longer used to communicate truth, but rather to further the agenda of particular interest groups. All that remains are siloed humans shouting at the wind.

Noah: I’m not sure I buy that. Human beings have always sought to augment and enhance themselves. The internet for example has collapsed physical distance and made knowledge accessible in a way that has not occurred at any point in history. Artificial Intelligence will accelerate these developments. It’s just the next logical phase in human development.

Lewis: The internet may have resulted in the death of distance. But digital information is a medium that by its nature is ephemeral. Egyptian hieroglyphs inscribed on clay tablets can be read today even though they were written three thousand years ago.

Noah: So what?

Lewis: The Egyptian empire could not expand because those clay tablets could not be transported further than the length of The Nile.

Noah: Isn’t it better that information is now far more accessible?

Lewis: Better for whom? And what? Cultures develop over centuries as a result of localized knowledge. The inexorable convergence of all media that resulted from the technologies of digitization flattened cultures and made content that could be remixed and rendered on interoperable networked systems. This cultural homogenization invariably served corporate interests as electronic communication could be transmitted instantaneously at low cost with perfect fidelity to the original. It goes some way to explain why Apple’s market capitalization is greater than the annual GDP of most countries. Individuals find themselves increasingly socially disconnected and polarized into digital factions rather than familial units. Such social groups, like the digital technologies that create them, are amorphous, pliable and vulnerable.

Noah: Vulnerable to what?

Lewis: Vampires and the government.

Noah: Ha, great for us! The governments in the West are premised on democracy. You have a problem with that now?

Lewis: Democracy is derived from the Greek dēmokratia, from dēmos ‘the people’ and –kratia ‘power, rule.’ The problem comes with ‘Vox populi, vox Dei.’

Noah: The voice of the people is the voice of God.

Lewis: Right, but what people fail to understand is that the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. Jurisprudence in Western civilization has its foundation in the case law system developed in the Jewish and Christian legal traditions. Societies and the laws that govern them invariably reflect the character of the religion and its God. The Rule of Law and inviolability of human rights can be traced to the idea that man was made in the image of God. The legal maxim ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has its origin, its Genesis, in the idea of Man’s divine nature. This divinity afforded him due process protections in law. These laws were later categorized by Blackstone in his commentaries only to be famously dismissed as ancestor wisdom by Bentham.

Noah: Utilitarianism?

Lewis: Underpinning all of Bentham’s ideas was utilitarianism. It demanded that laws and government should serve ‘the greatest good for the greatest number.’’ Bentham argued that the English common law should be codified, although certainly not on any abstract concept of inalienable human rights, an idea he described as ‘nonsense on stilts.’

Noah: But you realize that a short while prior to Bentham the Church was burning people at the stake. The Church was one of the most corrupt institutions then and some would say now. There’s a reason that there exists a separation of church and state. Why would you surrender your ability to reason in favour of submitting to an authority over which you have zero control?

Lewis: Because in the absence of God, the Supreme Court becomes the final court of appeal. As definitive as their judgements might seem, all precedents can ultimately be overturned by subsequent courts. This is not so with God. I have no problem with the separation of church and state. I do have a problem with the separation of morality and state. Without human rights that are inviolable Man becomes infinitely malleable rather than inalienable.

Noah: So what’s the plan? Derive AI regulation from an exegetical account of the Tower of Babel!

Lewis: Secular reasoning has its place. It just needs to be applied with humility and oriented towards non-secular teleological ends. The policy goal is too short term with its calculus of benefits and harms and set far too low with its ostensible aim of establishing public trust.

Noah: So policy should be aiming for the Kingdom of God? That’s a little vague, don’t you think?

Lewis: Without this fundamental orientation our actions cannot be measured against the standard of truth. Being unable to admit we are wrong, we are left with gerrymandering the evidence to fit the current narrative as defined by the consensus — we obey Demos rather than Deus.

Noah: OK so what might that standard be?

Lewis: Not what, who. In the West that person is Christ, for in Him all things are yes and amen. Consider if you will the protagonist Winston in Orwell’s 1984. Winston must love Big Brother before he is allowed to die. He is not permitted to die a martyr as this will only inspire others to follow his example and seek truth. His death absent submission to Big Brother would make him a symbol of resistance to tyranny and that cannot stand. Though he seeks to cling to objective reality he tragically realizes that betrayal by those closest to him is the price of truth. Subjected to physical and psychological torture he comes to really believe that 2 + 2 = 5. His indoctrination is finally complete when he sincerely declares his love for Big Brother.

Noah: A most proleptic book. The internet has made it much easier to manipulate the past. It’s a lot easier than admitting you were wrong and contending with the truth.

Lewis: This explains why a man declaring himself to be God incarnate can be betrayed and executed though completely innocent and without a fair trial. Truth, particularly Truth personified, will be offensive to anyone cloaked with deceit. But truth has curative attributes so you have to take on faith that although you may be subject to bodily harm, repentance and belief in Christ is the only path to true forgiveness and redemption.

Noah: But what about the other religions?

Lewis: What about the other religions? It’s not that they are valueless, but either Christ is who he says he is or all faithful Christians are attempting to imitate the life of a lunatic. But before you throw out baby Jesus with the bathwater, it would be wise to note that religious tolerance and modern science and the current legal system are Christian innovations. The legal jurisprudence of the West would have developed very differently had it been based on Islam. Unmoored from its Christian foundation, human rights are paid lip service in the current Human Rights Code guided by the dimmed fog lights of centuries past.

Noah: Not sure about that, what about all the wars that have been started in the name of religion?

Lewis: Just because you’re Christian, or follow any other religion for that matter, does not mean you can’t also be hypocritical. You may well profess atheism and yet be a highly moral person. You just can’t give an adequate account of where your moral behavior comes from. Now it is the case, whatever religion you profess, if you have qualified to practice law in any Western country, you have been grafted onto a legal tree that has Jewish and Christian values at its moral root. You can deny this fact, but you would be sweeping away centuries of historical fact in the process. We seem to have forgotten where our conceptions of human rights came from in much the same way that we have forgotten that New Year’s Day marks the circumcision of Christ eight days after the date marking his birth December 25^th. This is important because as the existentialist Sartre has noted, no finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point. Much effort has gone into erasing Christ from the public consciousness. But in the inexorable effort to be inclusive we have paradoxically become more intolerant. The secularization of our laws has resulted in an etiolation of legal reasoning and created a society of morally anemic lawyers.

Noah: You’re really kicking the hornet’s nest with that one.

Lewis: Lawyers are human, they lose their way like everyone else. However, in the absence of a Godhead, Christ to whom we can repent and believe, there is no forgiveness of sin. In the absence of objective truth all that matters is who controls the narrative, which will be fashioned to suit whoever happens to be the prevailing interest group. There is no right and wrong, as the moral categories of good and bad have no meaning since truth is whatever you want it to be. Two plus two can equal five. Vampires can be saints.

Noah: Ah relativism, that immoral tune that keeps on playing.

Lewis: Yes, but eventually someone has to pay the pied piper; metastasis is an attribute of relativism. It corrodes from within. Truth by contrast is remedial.

Noah: Yes, there’s a reason we avoid light. So what’s this all got to do with AI?

Lewis: If there is no God, then the claims of moral relativism make perfect sense; humans should do whatever they want, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is who is in power.

Noah: Isn’t that the very essence of survival of the fittest?

Lewis: In Darwinian terms vampires are at the apex of the evolutionary pyramid. We have immortality and yet we are unknown to God, our souls are black holes that reflect no good. AI, at least in its most secularized and generalized sense, will seek to replace man’s heart with a heart of silicone. Secularist man seeks to live a long life rather than a good life. Following Bentham, individual happiness and happiness for the greatest number will be prioritized over duty to God and to one’s neighbor. We, being evil incarnate, have souls that cannot be redeemed. Eternity has been removed from our hearts so we will never be known by the one who knows all.

Noah: Truly forsaken and blotted out of the book of the living. So what do you think they’ll choose, to pick up their cross and follow Jesus or excise the eternity that’s been placed in their hearts and be like us?

Lewis: Well one thing is for sure, there’s no way to transcend death without confronting the problem of moral evil. We were there at the beginning. Their attempts to seek immortality will cause them to become as bloodthirsty as we are.

Noah: Yes. All regimes that have attempted to usher in utopia have had to do so by shedding blood, but democracy has ultimately prevailed.

Lewis: Are you sure about that? Regardless of the political system, governmental policy can either be realized by coercion, compensation or ideological persuasion. Coercion is the policy measure of choice in totalitarian regimes because there is no higher authority. Totalitarian regimes centralize governmental authority and take Draconian measures to enforce their plans. Democratic regimes have access to the same AI technology as their totalitarian counterparts, power and control will just take different forms. In democracy, with its obeisance to markets, it will be expressed as surveillance capitalism and in dictatorships, with their proclivity towards centralized authority, it will result in state surveillance.

Noah: It will be different this time. With Dataism as the new religion and AI technology as its catalyst, humans can finally accelerate the slow evolutionary processes. Once they fully map and manipulate the genomic sequences, organisms will be properly understood as biological algorithms, processors of data.

Lewis: Hackable animals?

Noah: Exactly. Death is a technical problem with a technical solution.

Lewis: But that path won’t lead them to God, it will lead them to us. Like us, they would have eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear.

Noah: Transhumanism is the future. The merging of man and machine is inevitable. It’s happening now with the metaverse. Virtual reality will eventually become just reality.

Lewis: But avatars cannot be martyrs; they cannot die for their beliefs. Humans will be far easier to control than they are now. If the Coronavirus pandemic was any indication of people’s willingness to surrender their freedoms wholesale to government and big tech, the task will be a facile one. All-knowing transhumans are not the same as wise actual humans.

Noah: Why is that?

Lewis: Wisdom and knowledge are the result of very different pedagogical processes. The primary difference between the two is that wisdom involves a perspective and context and the ability to make discerning judgments about a subject. Anyone or anything can become knowledgeable about a subject by reading, researching, and memorizing facts. AI and technology accelerate the accumulation and processing of knowledge, but without wisdom they will both amplify and intensify the worst of human nature.

Noah: That would explain how porn drove the development of the internet. So where do you think this will all end?

Lewis: It will end, as the poets say, at the beginning. After all the explo-ration we will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time through the unknown, unremembered gate. The few that now see in the mirror dimly, will know fully as they are fully known.

Noah: And what about the rest — the ones that persist in the pursuit of the immortal mind through AI technologies?

Lewis: They will look into the black mirror and see us.